Last Updated on March 9, 2016 by Tim
There seems to be a web application to do everything for your business: Basecamp to project manage (kind of), Trello for to-do’s, QuickBooks or FreshBooks for accounting, and CRM tools to do this, that along with the other. As a business owner managing multiple accounts to run the show should not be the solution, and for a team software fragmentation isn’t the most effective way to work. HootSuite did a great job at bringing social media management into one platform for a community manager to control, but when projects need to be coordinated, monitored and defined by a group of members for every aspect of a business relationship not one tool gives the functions to successfully provide the Big Picture.
That’s the exact name of the new and award winning solution that began being built by Sascea a year ago to solve the problem. Clint Robinson, Sascea Director of Technology says: “Most business software in the cloud is just that – an isolated instance on a background of blue sky. We built Big Picture to be a complete weather system. You may only want to know if it’s going to rain on your project parade, but for the company as a whole that rain is part of a much bigger ecosystem.”
When a company adds a service, attains a new client, or begins a new project work is created for many people in many different positions. Big Picture is designed as an all-in-one tool to help those doing the work focus on what’s essential to them to make a company grow. The cloud based SaaS application is flooded with essential and very useful features to do just that, such as:
- Customer Relationship Management
- Social Media Relations
- Sales Pipe
- Estimating
- Time Keeping
- Project Management
- Invoicing
- Vendor Management
- Human Resources
- Payroll
- Book Keeping
- Accounting
- Digital Asset Management
But to build a winning product that delivers where many have failed, Sascea had to first understand security, the needs of large and small businesses and what problems are afflicting each aspect of business management. “We evolved with real clients as we built this software,” explains Kofi Gyekye, Sascea Product Development Lead. “We talked to our contacts in agency and NGO spaces at length. What we saw time and time again was that stress is created in the workplace when information doesn’t make it to relevant people at the right time.” The result is scaleable software that is secure, easily upgradeable by the Sascea team and a user experience that is relevant to the person using the product.
Let’s look at how the Big Picture could be effective for every business; After any sale details are passed to client services, at which time production and scheduling is conducted and project management occurs in each business. But what if during production and client services obstacles occur, as they always do? Then HR may be contacted for new hires, profit margins are adjusted or employees may work longer hours affecting every part of a company. Currently all this information may be fragmented over numerous applications which don’t successfully communicate with each other.
Big Picture not only pushes details for every aspect, but serves the information, through user privileges, the data that is only pertinent to that users department. The finance team can overview budget targets and how projects are affecting revenue, client services are shown to do lists and not the specifics that the finance team is given, while the sales team will be given an overview of their sales oriented tasks and funnel statuses but not hit with project specific details that don’t affect their discipline. A focused approach to business.
The design philosophy of the Big Picture should be noted as well. They took a minimalistic and focused approach to get you right to the task. The interface is stripped of the useless items but doesn’t take away from form and function. While many applications provide tables and use an approach that evoke no emotion, Big Picture is friendly and makes processing so simple to understand that training is reduced because cheques in the system look like cheques, invoices look like invoices, the sales pipe looks like a sales pipe reducing the difficulties of learning new software.
As their website says: “The Big Picture is easy to use because your employees will recognize the things they work with everyday. Maximize productivity by letting your company use a powerful app that is simple and easy to use.”
Before Big Picture companies had to purchase 6 to 8 different cloud based solutions, with the Big Picture there’s now a better way to understand the health of your company and what actions everyone in a company can take to help grow the business.
Special Note: Big Picture is meant for medium and larger size companies – but it can be useful for founders that are wearing a lot of different hats. To help startups get going on managing their businesses better Sascea is running an application process.